


Throw Me A Lifeline, Open The Door

by ratherbefree



Series: jxaappreciationweek2016 [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 05:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7788124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherbefree/pseuds/ratherbefree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s went thirty-*cough* years of black and white and grey, accepted the dullness, embraced it, even. And now, after all the faking and doubt and near self-loathing, there’s… Yellow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Throw Me A Lifeline, Open The Door

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Screaming Color](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4065841) by [llamalark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/llamalark/pseuds/llamalark). 



> this is a "world is black and white until you meet your soulmate" au because I'm trash
> 
> also, pill addiction is briefly mentioned.
> 
> (title from "Stardust" by MIKA)
> 
> for jxaappreciationweek2016: "Day 2 (16 Aug 2016): Favorite AU, from the show or another universe/AU fic"

When she walks into Spanish class that first morning, the first thing she notices is that the teacher (student? assistant? stranger?) stood at the front of the room is wearing a garishly pink shirt. 

And she freezes in her tracks. 

Wait… What? 

She finds herself doing a double-take. _Pink._

The other students mill in around her, take their seats, and for once in her life Annie Edison doesn’t care about optimal seating arrangements - whether or not she’ll get a seat in the t-zone, exactly how close she’ll be to the board, to the door… The worries all fade away. She is way more enchanted by the _colour._

She wonders if this - seeing just one colour - will mean that she can see _everything,_ bright and bursting and beautiful, just the way it’s described in books… 

Alas, no. The greys of the classroom resume their dull stare, merging and seeping into one another until it’s difficult to tell table from floor, poster from wall. So she sneaks one last look at the man’s shirt, hoping it’s not just a trick of the eye, hoping it’s not just too good to be true. 

 _Pink._ The colour remains, practically beaming at her. 

In contrast to the glare held by the owner of the shirt. _“Sentáis.”_

She might not know much Spanish yet, but she can certainly understand the severity of his tone, so she takes a seat in the front row. 

* * *

Jeff has never been so bored in his life. 

He took Spanish 101 as a blow-off class, initially, trusting that he’d remember enough choice phrases from middle school that he would be able to cruise along in the introductory course. 

He was wrong. 

Instead the teacher (Chan… Chang? Cheng?) immediately begins talking about _verbs,_ and _conjugating,_ and _grammar,_ and it doesn’t look like the few words he actually _does_ remember are going to be very helpful. ( _Buenos días, dos cervezas, por favor, gracias.)_

So he’s on level 18 of Bejewelled, matching the varying tones of white, grey, and black, when something catches his eye. 

There - the square, in the corner. 

At first he thinks he’s hallucinating, or perhaps it’s so damn stuffy in the classroom that he’s starting to black out. That’s the only explanation he can think of, after all - and he remembers the days of high school; kids pressing down on their eye sockets hard enough to see flashes, no matter how fleeting, of colour. 

He blinks, once. Slowly. 

But the yellow tainting the pixelated diamond (and yes, it’s most definitely _yellow)_ doesn’t go away. 

And his first thought is, _oh, shit._ He’s went thirty-*cough* years of black and white and grey, accepted the dullness, _embraced it,_ even. (his apartment is white-walled, furniture sleek and black. Enough to give off the _classy older guy_ look, as opposed to the _middle-aged loser who still can’t see colour.)_

And now, after all the faking and doubt and near self-loathing, there’s… Yellow. 

He slips his phone into his pocket before taking a long, languid look around the room. The rest is still the same - white, light grey, darker grey, black, then cycling back to the murky, unclean in-between shades - but then he catches another flash of yellow. 

 _Hair._ Soft and bright and wavy. 

So _that’s_ who his soulmate is. 

(He successfully gets her name a couple days later - _Britta,_ and thinks, _yeah, he can definitely work with this.)_

* * *

It’s simply _magical,_ the next few weeks. Annie begins to see colour dripping, smoothing over her everyday life - suddenly her building turns from a deep, dark shade of grey into a just-as-drab, yet _far more exciting_ earthy brown. Her headband is green, Ruthie is orange, and her eyes are blue. _Blue!_

The black-and-white tones fade out slowly, and even surprise her when they _don’t_ fade away. Turns out, her door is a sort of orange-tinted white, as opposed to the plain colouring she’s always lamented over. 

Going to school is even more exciting, not just because of her new _friends_ (!!!) but also, there’s just a newfound reassurance that wasn’t really there in high school. Annie Edison has a _soulmate._ She sees _colour._ Like an independent, competent adult. It’s a fresh start, in a way, except _even better._

She knows it’s not Troy (she’d have known much, much earlier if it was) and not Abed (the guy’s like an open book and seems to be incapable of lying, so she asks him outright one day - and he answers, evenly, _no_ ) and not Shirley (who proclaims rather loudly that _God is the only soulmate she needs)_ and probably not Britta (who evades the question) and eww, no, she’s absolutely never _ever_ going to entertain the fact that it might be Pierce. Nope, no way. 

And it’s probably not Jeff, either, because he’s an older guy (right?? does anyone know his actual age?) and come on, no one goes _that_ long in their life without seeing colour. (Plus, his outfits are _way_ too colour-coordinated for them to be based on guesswork alone.)

So she does some calculations, and some clever snooping, and tries to work out who her soulmate is. 

There’s thirty people in her Spanish class (excluding Señor Chang, because, ew) with around half of them close to her own age (meaning, in this case, twenty five or younger). Fifteen people, and then all she has to do is eliminate the possibilities one by one. 

Troy and Abed are out. Thirteen left. Neil seems to dress exclusively in black, so she guesses she can mark him out. Vicki Jenkins she approaches after class one day, under the guise of asking whether or not her cardigan matches her blouse, and when the other girl just shrugs in response, she crosses her off the list, too. 

So… Eleven possibilities left. She can do this. 

* * *

Jeff figures Britta’s the type of girl to fall for a guy’s _sensitive side,_ so he waits until they’re texting late at night. He can tell from her grammar that she’s a little bit drunk and to be honest, so is he, and for whatever reason he decides that the best time to drop the _soulmates_ bomb on her is right. now. 

_‘So, are you seeing rainbows yet?’_

He smirks at his own line, takes a swig from his beer, and awaits her response. 

_‘What?’_

So she’s playing the clueless card. Well, he can help her with that. 

_‘I’ve been living in technicolour since I met you.’_

Another swig. This time, she doesn’t text back right away - and Jeff absolutely forces down the nagging, anxious _what-ifs_ because _of course_ Britta Perry is his soulmate, it’s the only thing that makes sense. 

After ten minutes he’s still waiting. 

After fifteen, he receives only five vague, indecipherable words. 

_‘We should talk in person.’_

(And the conversation is awkward and messy, and Britta won’t stop giving him these awful, sympathetic looks, and afterwards he lies in bed and stares at the grey walls all around him and pretends, for a while, that everything’s just the same as it always was.)

* * *

Jeff asks her to dance and she’s never been so _happy_ at a party - no longer is she the shy, closed-off girl who sits in corners and leaves at 7pm, nor the crazy, out-of-control weirdo who swallows pills like they’re candy and runs through glass doors - and that’s mostly what she’s thinking about when he takes her hand. Not the tingly warmness she feels at his touch. Not the zip of excitement she feels all the way to her toes. 

And she _definitely_ (not until later, not until _much much_ later) doesn’t think about the way that the background seems just a little brighter, the colours just slightly more vibrant, the increased heat of the reds and cool of the blues. 

And then… Then she _does_ think about it, after the debate and the kiss and the (adorable, terrible) head-pat, and at first she thinks _oh no_ but then it makes more sense. 

It all falls into place - his nervousness around her the past couple of weeks, the way his clothes are _so much_ more well-matched now in comparison to the first few days of school, the fact that she’s been searching her Spanish classmates for over a month, now, and found exactly zero results - and she _knows,_ then, she _knows._

Jeff Winger is her soulmate. 

And she thinks - is almost positive - that she’s his, too. 

* * *

Annie gives him a look, just a brief flash, under the fairylights, right before she leans in to kiss him. And that’s it - she knows, doesn’t she. She knows that he knows. 

And after she pulls away, he moves back in straight after. ‘Cause kissing your _actual soulmate_ feels very, very good and he is very, very aware that this might well be his only chance to do just that. ( _Their_ only chance?) 

Then she breaks away and rocks back down and the colours grow dimmer, the brightness of the lights become weaker, and his resolve strengthens. 

(“Annie, this was a mistake.”)

**Author's Note:**

> i might write more of this at some point (???) bc I'm kind of in love w soulmate aus


End file.
